Meetings
JGSWS meets on the second Monday of each month, from September through June. Admission is free.
NEXT MEETING (via Zoom):
"Rediscovering the Lost Jewish Communities of Eastern Europe,"
presented by Sally Mizroch and Phyllis GrossmanMonday, June 9, 2025, at 7 PM PDT via Zoom
(Zoom doors open at 6:30 PM)The JGSWS invites you to attend this meeting via Zoom. Zoom doors open at 6:30 PM for attendees to network and catch up with each other. The presentation begins at 7 PM. Registration is required.
To register for this meeting, click this link or copy it into your web browser:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/SiyRa9njQoyLUxCuxktRMw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
ABOUT OUR PROGRAM
There is an enormous and growing interest in Poland, especially in southeastern Poland, to revive the memories of the lost Jewish communities that used to thrive in the region. Sally Mizroch will highlight the efforts of Professor Wacław Wierzbieniec of the University of Rzeszów, who has organized a series of annual Holocaust Remembrance Events in a number of towns and cities in the region for over 20 years. She will especially highlight activities of the most recent events, the 17th Holocaust Remembrance Program, which took place in January 2025. This presentation will provide insights into several Jewish communities in southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, both large and small.
Phyllis Grossman will give some examples of projects she’s worked on with young people in western Ukraine. Ukrainian students are now learning about the Holocaust in public schools, and they’re also learning English. She’ll describe some projects and deep connections with people she now calls friends in villages where her grandparents used to live.
When we think of the disruptions of the Holocaust, we think of the Six Million dead, and perhaps we think of the heroic survival or horrific death of a family member. We mourn these losses, but it is impossible to comprehend the loss of Six Million. We recognize the survival or loss of a family member with either joy or sadness, but this is usually a small story about one individual or a family.
We seldom think about what else we’ve lost: The vibrant diversity of various Jewish cultures in Europe, in Germany, Romania, Hungary, Galicia, Lithuania. The different Yiddish accents. The differences in cuisine (e.g., savory versus sweet gefilte fish).
Irish-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Polish-Americans are descendants of people who left their home country for a better life, for economic opportunities. Sally’s Polish-Jewish ancestors who came to the U.S. between 1884 and 1899 were also looking for better opportunities in America. They were not leaving to flee anti-Semitism. The relatives they left behind were, in many cases, middle class people living lives similar to our lives today. They were not looking over their shoulders worried about a future Holocaust that no one could have imagined. They could not have anticipated that an invading army would capture and kill them and Six Million others over the course of six years.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Sally Mizroch began exploring her family genealogy in the summer of 2003 when she answered a request for information about “Sarah Mizroch,” her grandmother, which had been posted on the JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF). Since then, she has discovered -- and visited -- cousins all over the world. She has used web-based databases and has visited archives in Lithuania and in South Africa in search of information about her ancestors. More recently, she has visited maternal ancestral towns in Poland multiple times and is coordinating a cemetery restoration project in her great grandfather’s hometown, Rzeszów.
She is President and Program Chair of the JGSWS and previously served as Secretary on the board of LitvakSIG.
In her professional life as a marine biologist, Sally studied large whale populations at NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, using both photo-identification and historical whaling data to estimate whale life history parameters, vital rates, distribution, and abundance.
“The combination of a strong scientific background and my natural attraction to the study of population dynamics allows me to see ‘genealogy' as both an art and a science. This is something that I love to share with others.”
Phyllis Grossman has been researching her family for 30 years. She has made seven trips to Ukraine to do research in the Lutsk and Rivne Archives and to visit all of her family’s ancestral villages. She’s a long-time JGSWS board member and webmaster. Phyllis also served as a co-chair of the 2016 IAJGS conference in Seattle.
FUTURE MEETINGS
September 8, 2025: Gil Bardige, "Help! Part 3 – I Got My yDNA & mtDNA Results…What Do I Do Now?"